Affordable Housing in St Andrews: a Pervasive Issue

The lack of affordable housing in St Andrews has long been a topic of heated debate. To try and tackle this problem, a number of local organisations came together and formed the St Andrews Town Commission on Housing. The purpose of the Commission was to conduct a thorough study of the factors affecting the housing situation in St Andrews. The report, published in 2013, came to the conclusion that two issues outweighed all the others: affordable housing is scarce in St Andrews, and that the proportionally large student population exacerbates the situation by leading to increased prices (students account for roughly half the overall population in St Andrews).

In the report, the Commission set out a number of strategies to tackle the housing issue, but also conceded that "there is no easy solution or ‘magic bullet’ to resolve the affordable housing situation".

One of the proposed alleviation measures is to build affordable housing on the Madras campus on Kilrymont Road when the new school site is built. This recommendation has since fed into a further debate revolving around the relocation of the school.

The full report has been recently added to our repository and can be viewed here.